United States of America Wiki:Requests for adminship
Requests for adminship (RfA) is the process by which the users of the United States of America Wiki decide who will become administrators (also known as admins or sysops), who are users with access to additional technical features that aid in maintenance. A user either submits his or her own request for adminship (a self-nomination) or is nominated by another user. The community grants administrator status to trusted users, so nominees should have been on the United States of America Wiki long enough for people to determine whether they are trustworthy. ; Nomination standards :Any registered user (no I.P. addresses) may nominate another registered user (again - no I.P. addresses) for administrative privileges. Self-nominating is allowed, but may be frowned upon depending on the case. Potential candidates may inform other users of their desire to become an administrator if they wish to avoid self-nominating. Candidates for bureaucracy must already be sysops. Bureaucratship is usually granted only if there is a need for a new bureaucrat. ; Decision process :The numbers of people supporting, opposing, or expressing another opinion on a candidacy are the main factor in determining whether or not the user will become an admin. Requests will be held for two weeks before a final decision is made. Once this time is up, a bureaucrat will decide whether to make the user an admin or not. The are no requirements for nomination, but here are a few general guidelines: *Candidates should be well-known, trusted, and helpful contributors to the wiki. *Candidates should have been an active contributor to the wiki for at least eight weeks to a few months. *Candidates should have a good number of contributions (generally a few hundred). *Candidates should have shown their ability to help other users. *Nominations made by new users are sometimes frowned upon because occasionally, a user may create an account, make a few contributions, then self-nominate. These users are potentially dangerous because they may have negative intentions and have not actually earned administrative privileges, although they are luckily always unsuccessful and strongly opposed. Since all editors are equal, the nominator should be irrelevant to the nomination. *If an RFA fails, it's generally a good idea to wait a few weeks before nominating that person again. Once that person has been around for longer or made more contributions, they can be nominated again. This especially goes for self-nominations. ; Expressing opinions :Any user with an account is welcome to comment in the Support, Oppose and Neutral sections. To vote or comment on a candidate's nomination, please use one of the voting markup choices listed below. Votes should not be based on only edits or time active, but also maturity and character. Before voting, think carefully about what you've seen of the candidate's actions and reactions, and assess their leadership skills and diplomacy - necessary traits for an administrator. Try to always make the best decision for the benefit of the wiki. Remember that this is not a secret ballot. Votes are often responded to, and discussion commonly takes place within the candidate's nomination section. Try to avoid heated arguments and remain calm. Votes should also not be based on friendships or rivalries. If a candidate has voted negatively against you or a friend of yours in the past, do not simply oppose the candidate's nomination for that reason. Ask the candidate to explain the reasons behind their vote, but do not base your vote on theirs. If the candidate explains their vote, and you truly feel that the reasons were insufficient, irrelevant, or incorrect, then the candidate's own voting policies may come into questions, but please explain this fully. The following list is a list of voting markup choices which should be placed at the beginning of all posts within a nomination section. If you think of a new markup choice which you believe will be useful, add it to the list. *'Support' - a positive vote. Should be well-explained. *'Oppose' - a negative vote. Should be well-explained. *'Neutral' - a neutral vote. Should be well-explained. *'Comment'/'Observation'/'Note' - a statement presenting facts or clarifying a disputed fact. *'Not yet'/'Wait a little' - a negative vote suggesting future support. *'Notice of intent' - a bureaucrat's notification of an intent to close voting and make a decision on a specified date. *'{Decision}' - a decision made by a bureaucrat presented in the form of {Example Candidate} has been made a sysop/bureaucrat or The voting period of {Example Candidate}'s nomination is now over, {Example Candidate} remains a normal user/sysop. Nominating Nominations must be accepted by the user in question. If you wish to nominate a user, make sure you let the user know on their talk page. All nominations should be posted at bottom of this page. Not at top. How to nominate # Create a page at "United States of America Wiki:Requests for adminship/NOMINEE", where NOMINEE is the username of the nominee, and subst Template:RFA into the page using this format: # Fill in another row of the summary table below with the nominee's information. # If this is a non self nomination, contact the nominee on their talk page to let them know that they've been nominated. # Before anyone can become an admin. they must first sign right by the template on their RFA page. In general, requests will take about two weeks. However, if an RfA seems to be progressing faster, then it may be resolved sooner. Decisions must be made only with community consensus. If there is no general consensus to make someone an administrator, they should not be given sysop powers. What can admins do? See the administrators page to learn about administrator privileges. What can I do to help? To improve your chances of becoming an admin, you should should do some or all of the following as a normal user: ;Watch and help to revert vandalism even before you're an admin :Even if you don't have the rollback feature, it doesn't mean you can't change vandalized pages back to what they were before. If you've been reverting for a while and feel that you're trusted, ask a for the . Any "new" pages that you can't delete yourself, just put the speedy deletion template ( ) at the top of the page. An admin will see this in Category:Speedy deletion candidates and delete it. This is the primary reason why this wiki needs admins - fighting vandalism and acting as a volunteer to keep this wiki clean, readable, and accurate. ;Create good content :Attempting rewrites of large articles will greatly help your chances of being recommended/accepted, as this is more noticeable in some ways than lots of minor edits to lots of small articles. Where the wiki wins over other sites is our ability to get information out fast simply because everyone has editorial control, even unlogged users. Help write the brand new updates - if someone else is writing the quest guide, make your own notes but start creating the sub-page articles ready to be blue-linked already. ;Be part of the community :Welcome new editors on their talk page and guide them in the right direction. Talk to other editors, engage in the forums and generally show your face around.